Category Archives: Science

You know when you read or hear about something and you think oh why didn’t I study that at university!! I’ve just had that response to this talk. This is so lovely and intelligent and engaging… and she had to run away from grizzlies while doing the fieldwork. Watch the video now…. Continue reading How Trees Talk to Each Other→

One of Dr Clifford Saron’s short talks about his experience in working with Buddhist monks in Dharamasala to look at what happens to their brain activity whilst they are meditation. But as he says at the beginning of this video:

“…. maybe these meditators were always extraordinary people; maybe that extraordinariness was what had led them to meditation in the first place. So how can you test this scientifically? how do you set up a control group for people who’s already got 20, 30, 40 years experience of meditation?”

What they did was set up a longitudinal study called The Shamatha Project.

Clifford Saron is another investigator I came across in the online Coursera MOOC Tibetan Buddhist Meditation & the Modern World. I really enjoyed his section of the course which explored the scientific study of meditation.Dr Saron is a neuroscientist who has applied his scientific expertise to investigating meditators – what are they doing? what difference does it make to them? do they act differently? what’s going on in their brain?

You can find a lot of his short videos on YouTube. Just search under his name. The ones I’m sharing here are on YouTube and were all part of the MOOC course material.

In the first video he gives an account of how he became involved in this field of enquiry in the 1990s in Dharamasala, India, meeting the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist meditators. As he says himself, those were life-changing experiences for him.

Maybe you’re like me and think that once you’re past 20 or so, your brain cell count quietly subsides and decreases from then on. No new brain cells in adult brains. Well, apparently, not. So that’s really good news isn’t it.

Some activities appear to help this renewal: getting a good night’s sleep, physical exercise, lifelong learning, sex….

Other things don’t help: getting older, stress, insufficient sleep….

What we eat also helps or hinders. The helpful stuff is highlighted in white below. Although alcohol isn’t helpful, nevertheless resveratrol is helpful. So drink red wine and the helpful resvaratrol will balance out the unhelpful effects of the alcohol.

This was a course run jointly by the Philosophy, Astronomy and Cognitive Science Departments at Edinburgh University. The philosophers took part in all of it. In the first half they linked with astronomers and in the second half with people researching in consciousness and what it is, and interested in developing machine intelligence. It was pretty tough going especially the first half! But I really enjoyed it. It’s on Coursera and you can find the course syllabus here. This is a brief intro…. Click the arrow to start.

As in most MOOCs, there comes a point where you’re faced with a project to submit. There were actually two projects in this course, one on the astronomy input and one on the consciousness / intelligence lectures. I went from being annoyed that I had to write one to being annoyed, after i got going, that I was limited to 750 words! Here are mine:

In what way can philosophy or philosophical thinking contribute to the physical sciences?

In the Past: Scientists and philosophers are curious about the world around them and there have been many helpful interactions between these two fields of thought over the centuries. In the mid-1600s, the Royal Society, a group natural philosophers, began discussing the new philosophy of promoting knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment, and Locke, a Royal Society Fellow, expanded on empirical philosophy. In 1700s, David Hume threw philosophical light on causality and the judgement of probability. These ideas became central to scientific method. Many philosophers have themselves been mathematicians, engineers, physicists: Descartes, Liebniz, Pascal, Wittgenstein, Russell, Popper.1

What of today’s philosophers? In the field of ethics, philosophers have a great deal to contribute directly to science by asking ethical questions about the direction of scientific research: work on nuclear weapons; embryo research; genetic modification.

Philosophers can also help the sciences indirectly by tackling science-deniers, especially climate science deniers. People who deny science bring their own vested interests into their questions. They make statements but they are closed and biassed in their approach. They pick and choose those facts that suit their ideological agenda. Scientists can of course answer biassed questions and show up any mistaken premises. However science denial, though a relatively recent phenomena, is already powerful enough to harm our wider society. Philosophers could aid not just science but all areas of enquiry by educating people about how to ask open and unbiassed questions of both scientists and science-deniers and how to evaluate their answers.

What of today’s scientists? Historically maths and science were thought to yield an especially safe and certain kind of knowledge and philosophers have examined and helped clarify that belief. But do today’s scientists need any help in evaluating what, how and if they know what they think they know?

Technology enables cosmologists to see ‘back in time’ as well to see into space. Observations of distant regions of space provide external evidence which tests assumptions about uniformity and must help diminish possible anthropic bias. Exploration of our solar system and beyond provides added evidence for our current cosmological theories.

Perhaps the job of philosophy of science has been done?

Falsification: Popper’s contribution on falsification is immensely important. No doubt that scientists already appreciated and practised the basic empirical approach that he defined, but falsification is a powerful methodological tool and definition was needed. Conversely scientists are right to be cautious in accepting the falsity of any body of well-tested evidence. The recent report 2 from OPERA team which seemed to require faster-than-light neutrino motion is a good example of this. Some months later, Special Relativity remains unfalsified and OPERA team are getting themselves a new clock!

The Anthropic Principle (AP) Carter, an astronomer, first formulated it. Barrow and Tipler 3, mathematician and physicist, have expanded it. Their FAP (F for Final) reads:

“Intelligent, information processing must come into evidence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.”

This could easily be taken as a teleological argument based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural or physical world. 4 The authors of AP may not themselves advocate an intelligent creator of the Universe, but their argument can be misused for that end. Bostrom 5, who is a philosopher, takes Barrow and Tipler to task saying that their FAP is in fact antithetical to the original conception of AP.

Bostrom collaborates with scientists on anthropic bias when estimating various catastrophic events. His 2010 paper 6 on Anthropic Shadow is a good practical example of current philosophical thinking clarifying the interpretation of data on near-Earth Object Impacts, Volcanism and Supernovae frequencies.

Conclusion: Philosophical thinking continues to contribute to the physical sciences. However some of that thinking is carried out by scientists themselves, and only some by philosophers. The scope of modern technology offers an alternative kind of approach to clarifying and testing scientific assumptions.

However Aristotle, often called the first scientist, is still not far off the mark when he tells us ….. “Begin by setting down the appearances and then work through the puzzles that these present us with.”

Feedback on the above! Three other people on the course assessed my essay. They followed a marking rubric set out by the course lecturers. Out of a possible score of 21, I got 19 🙂 These are their general remarks:

peer 1 → It gives a clear description of the relation between philosophy and science. Except for giving examples of the relevant lecture material, it quotes books and other information which enrich the content. However, instead of explaining how philosophy or philosophical thinking contributes to the physical sciences, it talks mostly about whether philosophy or philosophical thinking still contributes to the physical sciences.

peer 2 → Well argued with reference to the material. However, expected a deeper grasp of the fundamental philosophical issues impacting science.

peer 3 → very well structured and elaborated. The arguments continue logically and cumulatively. There are a lot of arguments that support the idea of how can philosophical thinking contribute to the physical sciences. It might have been best to focus on just one of them. But otherwise, a good overview is fine enough for me too !

In what way can cognitive science inform issues in the philosophy of mind?

Introduction:
The hard problem of phenomenal consciousness and qualia is intriguing: can we study scientifically what is completely subjective? can we ascribe precise physical causation to subjective experience? will we ever be able to bridge the gap between external and internal experience?

Phenomenal-consciousness is experiential, associated with incoming sense data; the total experiential content of an event answers “what is it like”. Experiences of grass, cucumber, limes all share the experiential quality (quale) of greenishness but not the qualia of sourness or sweetness. The external experience is quantifiable. The internal experience is not so quantifiable and sometimes it’s mysterious. (References 1-3)

Moreover not everyone experiences the same event in the same way: no way am I going to pick up a worm. My worm qualia = yeuch. But I’m married to someone whose worm qualia = “wow, he’s cute”. The worm event clearly isn’t reproducible in terms of qualia produced.

Since the same experience can produce such very different qualia, the qualia can’t be a quality of the actual experience alone. There must be something extra involved, presumably an internal quality of individual minds.

Quantifying qualia: When the basic experiment isn’t generally reproducible can cognitive science really help out? But…. experiences are reproducible in the sense that groups of individuals will respond with yeuch and groups with wow. So it’s possible to study groups of individuals and compare and contrast the results. It would also be useful in ascribing cause and effect to observe a range of qualia over a range of related experiences and analyse the emerging patterns, both of reported qualia and associated imaging results.

But however interesting all that is, it still leaves the hard problem: if scientists knew all the workings of the brain, that still wouldn’t tell us why and how a particular experience produces a particular subjective feeling or indeed any subjective feeling at all. (Reference 3)

Even if this problem is true as stated, does it matter?
In weeks 3-4 of this course, cosmologists acknowledged that ideas like inflation, multiverses are in principle unobservable directly. Philosophers asked is it really science when you can’t match theory with observation? Cosmologists responded with an example: although noone is going to go to centre of sun and measure its temperature, none doubts its predicted value of 15million degrees because it comes from physics tested and validated many times over in other contexts.

In other words, science always has some limitations but with confidence in the theoretical framework we can trust inferred conclusions.

How might this help philosophy of the mind?
It is always necessary to consider any underdetermination of a theory and this is in essence the problem of the hard problem. However the wider scientific context for studies of mind and consciousness includes : biology, neurophysics, general evolutionary theory, robotics, artificial intelligence.… If new studies of the physical mind produce results which are consistent with this wider theoretical context, then they deserve weighty consideration, in the same way as cosmologists give weight to theories of dark matter, dark energy and inflation though they not directly observable. Yet. Yet is an important qualifier… further study may well provide the breakthrough or at least give important hints about what the answer to the hard problem might look like.

Bayesian theorem too can help turn prior belief into a probability which can be quantified and developed as more information is acquired. It’s relevant to both cosmology and theories of mind. Since the mind problem involves uncertainty, Bayesian analysis should be able to help significantly especially since computing algorithms can cope with very complex statistics. (ref 4) Bayesian analysis can help measure whether any learning is going on in a mind. It can quantify the likelihood that physical causation is at work rather than merely correlation.

Much thought is given by scientists to the problem of distinguishing between correlation and causation.. This also lies at the heart of the hard problem. Science says: approach it pragmatically and here’s the sort of thing that will help….Ref 5 has a handy list!

Conclusion: Utilising the help available from cognitive science has and will surely continue to help philosophers deepen their understanding of the mind. The experiential gap may not be as hard a problem as it is portrayed. The complexity of the brain is a hugely hard problem to crack. Maybe harder than the hard problem itself. I would bet that the more advances made by cognitive scientists, the less hard the philosophical hard problem will appear.Bibliography

Feedback on the above. This included writing feedback from oneself. I think the score on this essay was 16/21.

self → I decided to focus on one aspect of the course – phenomenal consciousness, qualia and the hard problem. I found this a helpful way to deepen my understanding of this problem. I am aware that in doing this, I’ve omitted referring directly to various other ways in which cognitive science addresses the philosophy of the mind. However I have brought in aspects from the first half of the course that I think are relevant to this question.

peer 1 → Using subheading with such a short word-count could be avoided even though it provides some clarity to the reader. A formal essay structure would be more appropriate. Even though references rules were not exactly specified by the tutors, an academic reference structure or using an academic reference system/method (e.g. Harvard. Vancouver, APA) would be more appropriate. Most of the arguments do not address the question being asked. The student abruptly introduces the topic by providing an example: ‘’the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness’’ which is somewhat misleadingly presented as the main topic. This continues through the rest of the assignment. Some examples have been used, however they are not included in the lecture material, while the supportive arguments are not as coherent. This probably indicates not clear understanding of the lecture material or the assessment instructions. Moreover cosmology is not relevant to the topic as it is not a cognitive science. Similarly, discussing the ‘‘underdetermination theory’’ appears irrelevant to the topic .A number of helpful references have been used, however it would be more appropriate to use an original peer-reviewed source instead of Wikipedia which is a public secondary source.

peer 2 → The organizational structure of the essay is very logical, describing phenomenology’s problems and how cognitive science can address that. However, the essay is very disorganized, lacks an explicit thesis, and full of broken sentences that obscures your point somewhat.

peer 3 → Nice connection with the first part of the course. Good realization that although answers seem hard, we can expect to see them get easier. The connection between genetics and embryology required that molecular biology be invented first. Neuroscience has a long way to go, but we shouldn’t despair.

peer 4 → Excellent essay. You show good comprehension of the material and the problems arising from it. You show enthusiasm and imagination. To me, some of the threads seemed not to apply directly to the hard problem. If I were more pedantically inclined, I’d comment on sentence fragments and such.

This course is a cracker! (Scots for ‘wonderful’) I did this MOOC course earlier in the year. I thought it was time that I understood climate denial better and hopefully become more able to debunk it. I mean shouting at the TV brings some personal satisfaction but doesn’t help the overall situation. I’m not bad at recognising when inaccurate information is being portrayed as the truth. But I wasn’t good enough at recognising what exactly was going on and how to communicate that to other folk. Continue reading Climate Denial 101 MOOC→

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show here in getting up a full head of steam at climate change deniers:

1. U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology…. jaw-dropping clips of House members on that committee interviewing John Paul Holden, President Obama’s senior advisor on space and technology issues.

“How far back to the elementary school core curriculum do we have to go to get someone on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology caught up?” exclaims Stewart, pounding on his desk in exasperation. “Do we have to bring out the papier–mâché and soda so you can make a %#$^&$-ing volcano?”

When I listened to the Climate change Denial 101 lectures on FLICC it seemed a pretty straightforward and reasonable set of criteria. However when I tried some of the examples, I soon found that it wasn’t!

It’s definitely easier to identify aspects of FLICC when it’s a subject that I have some background knowledge of but even then, I’m still finding myself rather baffled as to which part of FLICC is happening. I suspect that there are probably FLICC overlaps in what people say when they deny what’s happening.

I came across an article with a climate change denier in The Guardian the other week so I thought I’d try analysing it for FLICC content. It’s an interview with Lord Nigel Lawson who was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (ie Finance Minister) and Energy Secretary in the 1980s. I posted about him in the MOOC forums because he heads up a climate change denial setup in UK called the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Continue reading Debunking Nigel Lawson→

This was a talk given in 2007. His catch phrase in the talk is “…but I’m afraid it’s not enough.” At the end of this talk, John Doerr was in tears. I wonder what he’s feeling and saying now when things are looking so much worse for the climate.

No surprises then than fracking, lower gas prices and fossil fuel industry opposition are involved.

“….Perhaps the biggest force working against … clean energy in general is this: Because natural gas has gotten so cheap, there is no longer a financial incentive to go with renewables. Technical advances in natural gas extraction from shale—including the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—have opened up reserves so massive that the US has surpassed Russia as the world’s largest natural gas supplier.

The price of natural gas peaked at nearly $13 per thousand cubic feet in 2008. It now stands at around $3. A decade ago, shale gas accounted for less than 2 percent of America’s natural gas supply; it is now approaching one-third, and industry officials predict that the total reserves will last a century. Because 24 percent of electricity comes from power plants that run on natural gas, that has helped keep costs down to just 10 cents per kilowatt-hour—and from a source that creates only half the CO2 pollution of coal. Put all that together and you’ve undone some of the financial models that say it makes sense to shift to wind and solar. And in a time of economic uncertainty, the relatively modest carbon footprint of natural gas gets close enough on the environmental front for a lot of people to feel just fine turning up the air-conditioning.”

Being undercut by Chinese low prices for solar echnology is also involved in undermining the clean tech industries. But the positive effect of that is to have helped solar panel installation companies and make solar installations cheap and immediately profitable.

But maybe the biggest threat is the vested interests of the fossil fuel companies. US is not alone now in chopping the subsidies to clean energy sources whilst maintining those to the old dirty ones. UK is doing the same.

Despite the fact that renewable energy received only a quarter of the subsidies that fossil-fuel-based electricity received between 2002 and 2007, it’s wind and solar that are on the chopping block.

Even solar’s biggest allies on Capitol Hill—people like Edward J. Markey, a top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee—fear the industry’s oil and gas foes may have gotten the upper hand now that the clean-tech bubble has burst. “We are not Panglossian about what lies ahead,” Markey says. “The fossil fuel industry and its allies in Congress clearly see the solar and wind industries as a threat and will try to kill these industries as they have for the preceding two generations. They want this to be a five-year aberrational period.”

In other words, John Doerr may once again have a good reason to shed a tear.

I came across the work of Naomi Oreskes while following a MOOC on Climate Change Denial. She’s pretty impressive. Here she gives the low-down on how science works and why scientists are deserving of being believed. Don’t bother watching if you are any of the following: anti-vaxxer, creationist, flat-earther, astrologer, etc etc You get the picture.

You’ve probably noticed when you’re trying to get someone to modify their opinion on some topic, that your best attempts frequently result in them having an even more entrenched opinion – despite your friendliest attempts to dissuade them and despite having given them well-authenticated reasons to change their mind. It all backfires and from your point of view anyway, the situation is now worse than before you began. Take heart. It’s not just you who ends up in this quagmire. Continue reading Worldview Backfire Effect & How to Debunk It→

I’ve been following the Science of Happiness MOOC run by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Centre. There are currently over 66,000 people signed up for it. It runs as a self-paced course and it’s jam-packed with fascinating videos and talks. There are also quizzes for each topic and even two exams so it’s challenging too. You can just watch the videos without doing any of the quizzes or exams if you want to, so don’t let the word ‘exam’ put you off.

(This was written some years ago for Lotus Realm Magazine under the title “The Great Wonder – Science and the Universe” Not my first title choice but nice to get it published. If you enjoy the article you’ll enjoy the books I’ve referenced at the end even more!)

After the sun has set, there is a very bright star visible just now in the western sky. Some years ago, when I was in India, I saw the same star setting westwards over the Arabian Sea. It was followed by a red star moving in the same westerly direction but setting much later. What are these bright stars? The one which is setting soon after the sun just now is Venus. ‘She’ is the goddess of love – beautiful, powerful, and sometimes jealous. Behind her across the Indian sky came red Mars called the God of War by the ancient Greeks. Another bright star in the Indian sky is Abhijit, Victorious, who helped the Hindu gods to conquer the asuras. (ref 1) Arabian sky-watchers called it Vega. Two more bright stars, one white and the other yellow, have been very noticeable for most of the past year if you live in the northern hemisphere at a latitude of about 65 degrees north. If you are a regular sky-watcher you’ll have noticed that they are not so bright as they were
last year and you’ll also know that they have been tracking across the sky relative to the other stars and that they weren’t there at all a couple of years ago. And these
two other stars? They are Jupiter, father of all these gods, and Saturn, the old god
whom Jove/Jupiter overturned to take the throne.